A Trosnant reader has:
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- Strong phonic knowledge and skills.
- Fluency and accuracy in reading across a wide range of contexts throughout the curriculum.
- Knowledge of an extensive and rich vocabulary.
- An excellent comprehension of texts.
- Read a variety of texts inside and outside of school.
- Secure understanding of comprehensive skills that they can apply effectively to reading.
Phonics at Trosnant
In order to develop fluent early readers, we recognise that we need to use a systematic approach to teaching phonics. Consistent, high-quality phonics teaching and learning plays a fundamental part in aiding the children to develop and apply the skills in all areas of the English Curriculum; this is achieved through the Monster Phonics programme. Daily lessons are delivered with enthusiasm and confidence to inspire progress amongst all our children at Trosnant, which is tailored to individual needs.
Across Early Years and Key Stage 1, we use the Monster Phonics Programme which is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme for teaching phonics skills, starting with initial sounds, blending and segmenting. It also introduces children to ‘tricky’ words that cannot be decoded phonetically alongside high frequency words which are integral to building sight vocabulary. Each vowel sound has an animated, colourful character to stimulate children’s engagement and memory.
Meet the Monsters!
Monster Phonics has a clear philosophy:
- Colour-coded sounds to support memory and facilitate understanding.
- Monster sound cues and actions to support memory and increase engagement.
- Rapid approach to the teaching of graphemes, grammatical rules HFW and CEW to improve reading fluency and access to the wider curriculum.
- Consolidate and apply learning in meaningful and purposeful real contexts.
- Formative assessment to provide opportunities to quickly identify those children who need additional support to keep up; through the use of the Monster Phonics intervention programme,
As the children move into Key Stage 2, a blended approach is followed. Superhero Spelling and Grammarsaurus Spelling Programme is followed which is personalised to suit the individual needs of our children at Trosnant. The spelling rules are applied and taught through a variety of engaging and fun activities. To develop the spelling expectations across the school, at the beginning of each English lesson, a dictated sentence is written using the necessary common exception word list.
Reading at Trosnant…
We strive to enable our children to become fluent readers and promote a love of reading at Trosnant. We create a text-rich environment for all of our children and want to foster a love of reading emersing our children to a variety of genres and texts. Children are expected to read at least 3 times a week to an adult at home, and this should be documented in each child’s reading diary and monitored by the class teacher. Each child has a book which is in line with their reading level, as well as books from the library, that they have chosen to read for pleasure.
A Book Talk journey is taught every half term in each year group, using a rich text driver. Lessons are planned and taught focussing on the reading skills within that Key Stage.
Throughout the year, children will encounter texts that explore the protected characteristics that are age appropriate and part of a wider journey to educate the children about all protected characteristics throughout their time at Trosnant.
In KS2 children are introduced to the HIAS Reading Fluency scheme to develop their reading fluency and comprehension skills. A number of assessments tools are used to track progression; fluency to comprehension assessment and fluency rubric.
All children are able to take a variety of fiction and non-fiction books home which they can access in our libraries. Each class has an allocated weekly library slot when they can exchange library books and undertake research.